Exercise your brain (a personal program)

by performing the following exercises

. "Managed by walking around" - walk and observe in unfamiliar territory which will broaden your perspective. Furthermore, the physical activity of walking invigorates the brain. This activity also helps to overcome mental blocks by getting you away from your desk and changing your environment

. Read funny books - humour promotes insight and enhances our health - even the immune system benefits

. Play games - activities like bridge, chess, crosswords, online games, etc provide good neural workouts

. Play - play involves discovery and imagination that expand your behaviourial repertoire

. Find out what you are not learning - read outside your usual reading list; try something different; ask a colleague to help with suggestions

. Get the most out of your business trips - become a tourist and go sightseeing; talk with the locals. These activities will increase your cultural IQ.

. Take notes - if hear or see something different, record it

. Try new technology - playing with new technology will help with your auditory, visual and tactile networks linking with your limbic system and your prefrontal cortex. Discussing what has happened with a friend will extend activity throughout the brain

. Learn a new language or instrument - this will put you at the pinnacle of mental athleticism

. Exercise, exercise, exercise - your brain is part of the system that benefits from cardiovascular exercise, good diet and proper living habits. Cardiovascular and strength training have beneficial biological changes, such as increases in endorphins and cortisone.

Music

Music can light up the brain. Recent work on elderly people with dementia has shown that playing them music they are familiar with and like reactivate them mentally and physically. This is not a short-term or temporary benefit.

It is now thought that music produces benefits in non-musical cognitive domains including academic areas like reading, maths, language skills, spatiotemporal reasoning (rotating three-dimensional images in your head) plus general intelligence, speech, physical development, listening ability and mood.  This is apparent in all ages starting from infants. Some examples, music training boosts

- language skills (research as shown that students neuro-architecture changes in a way to boost both motor skills (writing) an auditory skills (word recognition); other research showed that 10-year-olds practising a musical instrument for at least 3 year had a boost in both vocabulary and non-verbal reasoning; other students who started musical lessons prior to first grade showed superior sensory-motor integration as adults.  These reinforce the benefits of starting music lessons before age 7.)

- working memory (this is most obvious in the phonological loop and visuospatial pad. Working memory is a key element of the executive function which is a better predictor of students' future undergraduate performances than their IQs. It improves the selection and focus on relevant stimuli from a host of choices, eg help students pick out specific auditory streams in a room filled with irrelevant noise - this is an important component of executive functioning)

- speech (even though music and speech are not processed identically in the brain, they do share some common  regions (psychologically and physiologically) and features, eg rhythm, pitch (like when asking a question, our pitch goes up at the end of the sentence), etc.)

- social skills (detecting complex emotional information like sadness and fear, etc; musicians are better at detecting subtle changes in the sound, timing and pitch of the baby's cry; become more relational and empathetic, ie ability to decode emotional information in social surroundings, both verbally and non-verbally including imitating facial expressions)
"...music training boost foundational speech-processing tasks, spatial skills, detection of emotional cues, empathy, and...... social skills..."

John Medina, 2014

- moods (music induces hormonal changes involving dopamine, cortisol and oxytocin, eg dopamine is released when people listen to their favourite music; cortisol  release reduces stress; oxytocin involved in social bonding can stimulate temporary feelings of trust, love, acceptance, orgasms, lactation, etc. Language doesn't do it, music does.

"...music makes people happy, calms them down, maybe even makes them feel close to each other..."

John Medina, 2014

- therapy (using music as medicine with sick patients, ie calm them down and reduce pain, eg aid speech recovery in head trauma patients, recovery rates of particular cognitive abilities in stroke patients' verbal memory, focused attention, motor difficulties (Parkinson and cerebral palsy's sufferers). It is thought to work by forcing the brain to unused regions of the brain, ie the brain can be extensively activated by music.

"...music-therapy patients routinely outscore patients exposed to more traditional therapies in the measurement of arm movements and of gait as they walk. Music seemed to serve as a predictable metronome that helps people coordinate their movements..."

John Medina, 2014

Babies are known to have a positive response to music by swaying and responding with glee; also they enjoy it when an adult talks to them in musical speech which is rhythmic and high-pitched, and with long, drawn-out vowels. Prematurely-born babies gain weight more rapidly when music is played; music helps them learn how to suck their mother's breast more readily; it reduce their overall stress levels

Music is a key part of cultural expression in virtually every culture ever studied. It is thought that music may serve some evolutionary function, ie we may be hardwired for music, with regions in our brains specially devoted to music.

Music can give people a sense of well-being.

"...there's something for everybody in music, the very strong emotional component of it......The intellectual side is very powerful..."
Ida Lickter as quoted by Steve Dow, 2017

There is 'synergistic synaesthesia' (an immersive experience that cross-pollinates different art forms). Synaesthesia is the mixing of diverse sensory stimuli, ie

"...Hearing more with your eyes and seeing more with your ears..."
Richard Tognetti as quoted by Steve Dow, 2017

It's interesting to note that it is estimated that 10m. Chinese students play the piano and 10 m. the violin (Narelle Hooper, 2012)

(sources: John Medina, 2014; Narelle Hooper, 2012; Roderick Gilkey et al, 2017)

(source: Roderick Gilkey et al, 2007)